The Ration Ticket

Excerpt from the diary of Jules Flegmon.

12 May . --
The black market for life tickets is getting organized on a vast scale. Prospectors visit the poor and persuade them to sell a few days of life in order to insure that their families will have an additional means of subsistence. Old men living on meager pensions and unemployed wives of prisoners are also easy prey. The going rate for a ticket is currently between 200 and 250 francs. I don't think it will go much higher, because the clientele of rich or just well-off people is still fairly small compared with the numbers of the poor. What's more, many people refuse to admit that human life can be treated like vile merchandise. As for me, I will not compromise with my conscience.